This disclosure relates to a communications device and methods for monitoring elderly individuals from a distance and a method of using the communications device.
There is a very large (and growing) segment of the World's population that is aging (i.e. over 65, 75, or 85 years of age) that are healthy enough to live independently, at least part of the time, but who need some minimal form of care, monitoring, and assistance in order to remain independent i.e. live in their own home. Such minimal monitoring by interested caregivers/parties (hereinafter “caregivers”) can mean the difference between the elderly staying in their familiar home environment or having to move away out of their home and into some unfamiliar caregiving facility for the elderly (such as a nursing home), a very unpleasant and unwelcome alternative for the elderly individual and, usually, an extremely costly one for the elderly individual's family footing the bills.
This minimal level of care giving and monitoring is often done by informal (i.e. non-professional) caregivers, usually the monitored individuals' own grown children or other family friends or relatives. These caregivers may live with the elderly individuals but be away from the home regularly or for long periods of time, such as when going to work every day. These caregivers may also live in another house, another city, or even another country where regular daily contact with their elderly parent is minimal or non-existent. These informal caregivers often have day jobs of their own, as well as children of their own (hence the term the “Sandwich Generation”), and often have little or no financial means to monitor their elderly parents while away (for example, while at work). This makes the task of monitoring and caring for the elderly individuals very burdensome and getting more difficult and costlier as the elderly individual ages.
The elderly individuals themselves can be alone (completely, or at least part of the day while their informal caregivers are away at work, for example) and may also live with their spouse or partner or friends, usually also elderly and with possibly similar memory or health deficiencies and so similar needs for at least some monitoring and caring.
There are many devices on the market that serve to monitor such elderly individuals living independently who may have some memory and/or health issues. These devices, however, all require adaptation on the part of the elderly either in the form of behavioral changes or in the form of modifications to the elderly individual's home.
Extensive research has shown that ANY required behavior modification on the part of an elderly individual is a losing proposition, as most elderly individuals stop comfortably changing their daily lifestyle behavior after the age of 60 and even start reverting back to behaviors they may have had even decades earlier (hence the very well-known difficulties most elderly individuals have with “new” technologies in general, such as computers). This is unfortunate since a lot of remote monitoring could be easily accomplished by personal computers and associated peripherals and accessories yet this is the very technology likely to be rejected by many elderly individuals.
The challenge of the caregivers therefore is in how to introduce an end-point “beachhead of technology” (i.e. advanced computer based technology) into the home of the elderly individual without creating a negative or adverse reaction from that individual. If such advanced endpoint devices are installed in the monitored individuals' home, caregivers could then access the various status information from the other end point of this “virtual communications pipeline” (e.g. via remote browser capable computer or device) to effectively monitor their elderly ward.
A simple example of forcible behavioral modification from the elderly is for those systems that require the elderly to wear some device (e.g. an alert button to be pressed when in trouble or a watch that tracks their movement via GPS signals). While effective in some cases, there are many situations where these devices are ineffective because the elderly individual forgot to wear that device (common since elderly often have memory issues and wearing a “safety pendant” is a change in behavior for that individual), forgot to activate it when needed (again, because they simply forgot they had such a device), or simply was incapable of activating it (e.g. after falling in the bathroom and breaking a bone, or becoming unconscious, a very common scenario). Another serious limitation of such devices is that they are only useful in extreme cases (i.e. something bad happened) and convey no other information to the caregivers needing to take some actions. Finally, many elderly individuals regard these types of devices as intrusive and consider them, negatively, “badges of dependencies,” these devices reminding them daily of their failing health and the need for help from others, an unpleasant and demeaning concept for most.
More recent development in the field of elderly individual monitoring goes the other direction, namely to modify the home in which the elderly individual resides and reduce (though not eliminate) the need for the elderly individuals to change their lifelong-acquired day-to-day living habits.
Such modifications include installation of, for example, motion detectors, temperature and humidity sensors, even discreet cameras dispersed throughout the elderly individual's living spaces. These have shown to be much better at helping caregivers monitor elderly individuals and many elderly individuals welcome this more discreet brand of monitoring, something they see as a positive safety blanket, that keeps an eye on them.
But these systems have many drawbacks as well. The first big problem for many is the effort and expense needed in installing such systems (including labor costs and equipment costs, as well as construction issues to homes). Further, these systems are often NOT available to those families whose [to-be] monitored elderly individuals live in, for example, rented apartments where physical modifications to the structure are not possible or allowed. And most of these systems are made available through a third party, usually a professional medically-backed service that requires expensive ongoing fees for the monitoring of the individuals.
The biggest barrier for such systems is often that many elderly individuals still regard this type of monitoring as very intrusive and an extreme invasion of their privacy (the Big Brother syndrome). This fear of invasion of privacy is further compounded by the fact that all these current systems involve overtly keeping tabs and collecting various records on the elderly individual's daily activities and then TRANSMITTING this information to be stored on remote servers (where it can presumably be compiled and analyzed by various services looking for abnormalities in the elderly individual's behavior, thus triggering alerts if required) thereby putting access to this very personal information outside of the control of the individual or their caregivers.
But this transmission of VERY private information to some remote server has very serious implications in a world where corporate servers get hacked regularly and often, and where individuals' private records (such as personal health records, credit cards, and banking information) are then used for countless fraudulent activities.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,382,247 to Welch et al. discloses a system for actively monitoring a patient including at least one body-worn monitoring device that has at least one sensor capable of measuring at least one physiologic parameter and detecting at least one predetermined event. At least one intermediary device is, linked to the body-worn monitoring device by means of a first wireless network and at least one respondent device is linked to said at least one intermediary device by a second wireless network wherein the respondent device is programmed to perform a specified function automatically when the at least one predetermined event is realized. The monitoring device operates to periodically transmit patient status data to the intermediary device but the system predominantly operates in a quiet state, providing very low power consumption.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,130,396 to Rogers et al. discloses a medical monitoring system having a sensor system including a sensor associated with a patient and a lifestyle unit. The lifestyle unit includes a microprocessor in communication with the sensor system, and a portable-monitoring unit transceiver system in communication with the microprocessor. The portable-monitoring unit transceiver system has a land-line telephone transceiver and/or a cellular telephone transceiver, and a third-network transceiver such as a paging-network transceiver. A full data set is transmitted over the land-line telephone transceiver or the cellular telephone transceiver when communication links over these transceivers are available, and a reduced data set is transmitted over the third-network transceiver when communications links over the land-line telephone transceiver and the cellular telephone transceiver are not available.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,579,231 to Phipps discloses a portable unit worn by a subject, comprising a medical monitoring device, a data processing module with memory and transmitter for collecting, monitoring, and storing the subject's physiological data and also issuing the subject's medical alarm conditions via wireless communications network to the appropriate location for expeditious dispatch of assistance. The unit also works in conjunction with a central reporting system for long term collection and storage of the subject's physiological data. The unit may have the capability to automatically dispense chemicals that may alleviate or assist in recovery from an illness.
Though very useful for monitoring sick individuals, in particular geriatric individuals who live alone, these devices intrude into the individual's lives by requiring them to wear a monitor at all times or otherwise effectuate changes to their daily habits. These devices are often considered too intrusive to be used by these individuals who live alone, but are in good enough health that they may not require institutionalized care, such as an older individual living away from family and/or other interested parties.
The above are also examples of technology that has generally been developed to monitor more acute or critically ill, hospitalized or institutionalized individuals. There are many technological systems that take care of the gravely ill, the invalids and so forth.
All the above technologies also focus primarily or exclusively on the “Health Care” of the individual, where regular usage of those systems also become a constant reminder of their failing health, creating and often REINFORCING a very negative attitude toward the technology meant to help them. This negative reinforcing cycle leads to a reduced use of the very technology that can help them remain independent. Often, because of this negatively reinforcing cycle, the monitored individuals stop using those technologies altogether, to their and their caregivers' detriment.
However, in situations where individuals are not gravely ill, invalid or otherwise incapable of caring for themselves but may require some unobtrusive and passive monitoring of their activities, there is believed to currently be a lack of technology of a “Do It Yourself” nature for people, very much capable of living fairly independently but for whom some monitoring may be necessary and where behavior modification for that individual is a non-starter, especially when such monitoring would require “new technologies” to be introduced into their lives.
In that regard, technology needs to be developed and introduced to the older population in order to assist informal remote caregivers to monitor their activities unobtrusively to ensure that the monitored individuals are performing everyday activities, such as taking their medications or going grocery shopping. Remote interested parties may include, but are not limited to, their children or close relatives or others that care about them, collectively known as informal care givers or interested parties.
Minimal characteristics of such a technology must include the following: 1) Absolutely NO behavior modification on the part of the elderly individual. 2) Absolutely NO physical modification required to the home or living space of the elderly individual. 3) Absolutely NO transmission of private information (e.g. daily activities) to remote server (unless, of course, explicitly authorized by the individual and/or their authorized care givers). 4) Network connectivity (if necessary) can be established via a simple PSTN connection (a lot of homes may have Internet access, via Broadband DSL for example, but a large number of homes (especially those in which elderly individuals exclusively reside) still do not have always-on broadband access) and not require an explicit broadband connection to that home. 5) A physical form and presentation of the incarnation of the device which reinforces positive connotations when using the device resulting in increased usage rather than ultimate abandonment of the technology (the device must be presented NOT as a health tool or monitoring device but rather as a LIFESTYLE ENHANCING device). 6) A presentation of the device and usage (i.e. its “packaging”) which emphasizes this enhancement to their lifestyle rather than “health care monitoring” to the elderly individual (e.g. a familiar general purpose device that may “incidentally” support a remote caregiver's need to passively monitor the elderly individual). 7) A physical means to protect any information stored in that device so that even if the device is compromised, the information is not readily viewable without a proper key (hardware or software) even if the device is physically stolen. 8) An always ON device that can be used to detect motion and/or other suspicious activities (or lack thereof) such as loud sounds in the middle of the night and that can then proactively initiate a series of pre-programmed actions such as dialing out for help on behalf of the monitored individual.
In short, for elderly individuals, any device is explicitly “modern” or that overtly monitors them will often be rejected by them. To be accepted, such a device would therefore need to be unobtrusive, familiar, comfortable and easy to use (i.e. require no behavior modification or learning or adaptation) and offer value-added functionality that will be viewed by elderly individuals as beneficial from a lifestyle perspective (rather than a healthcare perspective) and so foster growing comfort and increased usage with each interaction of the device.